


Potato Salad

by tigerlily_sunshine



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Band, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Homelessness, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Past Relationship(s), Protective Calum, Protective Luke, homeless ashton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5694529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlily_sunshine/pseuds/tigerlily_sunshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Can I have that?” asks the stranger. </p><p>Michael hums in his throat, confused. He looks at the stranger, but the stranger isn’t looking at him. His gaze is locked on the potato salad spilled out on the sidewalk. There is a pink flush to his cheeks, but it is different this time. It isn’t modesty. It’s embarrassment.</p><p>“If you’re just going to throw it away, can I have it instead?”</p><p>(In which Ashton is a homeless stranger who is starving, and Michael has a kitchen full of food.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Potato Salad

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't been sleeping lately? And this happens? 
> 
> This started out as a way to unwind after finals. It was supposed to be done in time for Christmas - hence the timing of it - but that didn't happen, for personal reasons. 
> 
> This is a homeless!AU of sorts, but it is not meant to be a completely encompassing, totally accurate depiction of homelessness, only the type that is specific to Ashton's situation. There are references to a past abusive relationship and the long-lasting effects of said relationship. It might be triggering if you are sensitive to that topic. (If you're a little unsure about the references but might like to read this anyway, you are welcomed to [message me on tumblr](http://tigerlily-sunshine.tumblr.com/ask), and I will happily give you additional information.)

“You got the potato salad, right?”

“Yes, _Luke_ , I got the damn potato salad,” says Michael, perhaps a little too harshly, into the speaker of his cellular phone. He has it tucked between his ear and his shoulder, because he doesn’t have enough hands to hold the phone and the shopping basket full of last minute grocery items that _we just have to have, Michael!_ and the jar of mayonnaise that he’s aimlessly holding. “I still don’t understand why the fuck we need _potato salad_ for Christmas dinner. Nobody eats potato salad at Christmas.”

He is tired and annoyed. He hates braving stores in the days leading up to major holidays. He has just pulled a double down at the studio, because Harry couldn’t be fucked to come in for his last shift before the place was shut down for Christmas. Michael loves Harry. Of course, he does. Most people do—except for Cora, but that was Harry’s own fault for being stupid enough to try to get into her pants at the Halloween party almost two months ago. No matter what Harry said, it was obvious to anybody that Cora, and not Niall, was the devil in disguise.

So, yes, Michael loves Harry, and he enjoys working with Harry, and he’s impressed by Harry’s songwriting skills, but he kind of, sort of _hates_ Harry Edward Styles right now. Like a lot. Because Michael was supposed to have been home five hours ago. Had Michael been home exactly when he was meant to be, Luke wouldn’t have caught him on his way out of the studio to send him on a nice little detour to the gate of hell.

Technically, Luke sent Michael to the grocery store just around the corner from their shared house, but a grocery store exactly seven hours before Christmas is the equivalent to hell. There are too many people trying to squeeze into aisles that aren’t big enough for one person let alone fifteen. Michael dislikes being around so many people at once anyway. The fact that there are, at least, eight people between him and the bread aisle right now is, like, the cherry on top of Michael’s fucking sundae.

“Are the dinner rolls really that necessary when we’ve already got those crescent roll things?” asks Michael, warily eyeing the group of people he’ll have to wade through to make it to the aisle itself. “I mean, won’t those suffice?”

“Get the dinner rolls, Michael. It won’t kill you.”

“It might,” mutters Michael. He drops the mayonnaise in his basket, freeing up his hand. He adjusts his hold on the phone, because it feels like it might fall any second now. He raises his voice. “I got the mayonnaise and the potato salad and the bananas and the summer sausage—and, seriously, do you realize this is the most random assortment of groceries anybody could pick up at one time? Do you need anything else?”

“The dinner rolls.”

“I’m getting your damn dinner rolls, which, by the way, I’m literally sacrificing my life to get,” says Michael.

He is cranky, and Luke is, too, on the other side of the line. Or maybe Luke is frantic instead. There is a lot of banging sounds going on, metal pans against countertops. Michael is almost afraid to think about what he is going to come home to.

Michael elbows past a middle-aged lady who is arguing with a store employee about the overly-inflated price of the hams. She pauses her rant long enough to shoot Michael a dirty glare, and, somehow, her glare gets even more intense whenever she spots his bright red hair and eyebrow piercing. Michael is so done with this store that he is tempted to just set his basket of groceries down and walk out and make Luke come back for them. He doesn’t, though, because then he would have to hear Luke complain forever afterwards. A whiny Luke makes a busy, holiday-frenzied grocery store seem like heaven.

There is one package of dinner rolls left on the shelf. Michael spots it when he is halfway down the aisle. He runs with all of his might to it, like a sprinter running a fifty-yard dash. He is a little winded, embarrassingly enough, when he victoriously throws the dinner rolls into his basket, but he doesn’t care. He has the rolls. He is finished with this stupid store. He tells Luke as much.

“D’you mind picking up a jug of milk, too?” Luke asks innocently.

Michael hangs up on him. It would be a little more satisfactory if he could actually be all dramatic about it—there is something anticlimatic about pressing the ‘end call’ button on the touch screen—but he is so done with his best friend he could seriously scream.

(He swings by the coolers to get the milk, and a man twice his age nearly plows him over with a cart. Michael thinks about calling Luke back just to hang up on him again, because hanging up on him once isn’t enough for the hell that he has put Michael through with this impromptu, _but Michael you have to, please,_ trip.)

Stepping out onto the sidewalk is sort of the best part of Michael’s day. He is loaded down with grocery bags, and he is already losing circulation in the fingers of his left hand, but he has done it. He has gotten all of the items on Luke’s stupid list, so now he can go home and not have to deal with people for the rest of his life—or until Monday, whichever comes first.

Perhaps it’s because Michael is off in his own little world celebrating the fact that he has escaped the hell that was the crowded grocery store alive with all of his limbs intact. Or perhaps it’s because Michael is naturally an unobservant person who does well to remember to look both ways before crossing the street. Or perhaps it is even as simple as the universe just hates him. Whatever it is, something causes Michael to run smack-dab right into another person.

It results in a cacophony of grunts and yelps and limbs and pain all of the way down to the concrete. Michael drops the bags in an effort to, maybe, catch himself. He can’t gain control of his limbs fast enough, though. He lands hard on his front, his fall only broken by the solid body beneath his. It is hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. It stuns him, and he can’t do anything except lie nearly face-to-face with a stranger in the middle of the sidewalk and try to catch his breath—or, rather, try not to cry, because, dammit, his knee fucking hurts.

The stranger beneath him shifts and grunts in pain. It is this sound that knocks Michael back into reality and remind him that it is not socially acceptable to lie on top of somebody he doesn’t even know. Hell, he is better mannered during one night stands. He scrambles off the stranger, crawling on his hands and knees to sit next to him. His knee hurts like a bitch when he puts his weight on it, and he can’t help the whimper that escapes his lips.

“Are you okay, mate?” asks the stranger, concerned.

He has a nice Australian accent, so similar to Michael’s own that it makes Michael think about surfing and the hot Sydney sun and the fact that he hasn’t seen his homeland in two years. Michael has just survived the hell that was the crowded grocery store. He doesn’t need anything else to drag down his day, so he tries not to think about how much he misses his childhood home and looks at the stranger instead.

The stranger is nothing like Michael expects, but the universe must really hate him. Michael is literally the only person in the entire world who could plow over the most attractive human being ever. The stranger has dirty blond hair that curls at the ends, and his eyes are an odd hazel color that are brimming with worry that no stranger should unabashedly feel for another—especially not one who had knocked him flat on his ass and then proceeded to sprawl out on top of him.

In short, Michael kind of wants the earth to swallow him up right now. Or maybe just give him some type of amnesia that would erase this moment from his mind forever so that he doesn’t have to remember how badly he’d humiliated himself in front of such a beautiful person. Maybe not total amnesia, though. He would like to be able to remember that somebody this attractive actually exists.

“Uh—yeah—I’m, uh— _fuck_ ,” stutters Michael. He stops altogether. He slaps a hand over his face, hiding his eyes, because he is making a total idiot of himself, even worse than he already has. Things only get worse, as there are tiny pebbles sticking to his palm. They scratch his skin, so he jerks his hand away from himself, flailing it around like he has no control whatsoever over his limbs.

 _Please_ , he thinks desperately to the universe, _just put me out of my misery_.

He takes a deep, calming breath. He lets it out slowly and counts his numbers as he does, just like Luke taught him in the anger-management video he did last week. He is not actually angry right now, but the idea is to concentrate on a single thing—the air escaping his lungs—so that everything else seems so much littler. Michael needs littler now, especially for the humiliating panic that is rushing through his veins. Surprisingly—or maybe not since all of Luke’s commenters had praised him for the great techniques displayed in the video—the tactic works to calm him down.

When he opens his eyes, he’s met with hazel once more, but he doesn’t feel as frantic as he did a moment ago.

“Sorry, I’m fine, relatively, but I’m the one who should be asking you that. I ran right into you.”

“I wasn’t watching where I was going either, so it’s not entirely your fault,” says the stranger.

The way he blushes suggests that he is lying. That he doesn’t want Michael to feel bad for knocking him off his feet. Michael wonders how somebody can be so nice to a total stranger. If the situation had been reversed, Michael would have probably jumped up and started cursing the person for being so carelessly stupid.

Calum says Michael needs to work on his people skills. He is probably right.

“Well, I’m sorry, anyway,” says Michael.

He thinks Calum would be proud of him for apologizing without being morally pressured into doing so. He gives himself a mental high five. His euphoria lasts only long enough for him to spot the mess that has become of his groceries.

“ _Fuck_ , the potato salad!”

The potato salad has completely tumbled out of the bag and is laying half-opened, spilled out on the sidewalk. Michael knew he should have asked the cashier to put it in a different bag earlier when she had placed the seventh item in a bag that should really only hold six. He needs that potato salad, because Luke is going to have his head for it when he goes home without it.

He glances toward the store. It’s not worth it.

“Forget it,” he says, mostly to himself. “Luke can send Cal to get more, or he can go without. I’m not going back in there for all of the free advanced copies of X-Box games Luke can get his hands on. Nope. That’s not happening.”

As he rambles to himself, psyching himself up to face Luke potato-salad-less, he begins to gather up the rest of his bags. The milk has rolled a few feet down from him, but, thankfully, it survived the fall. He stuffs it into one of the bags that did not rip. When he turns around to gather the rest of his groceries, they’re already waiting in the stranger’s outstretched hand. Michael smiles his _thanks_. He had almost forgotten about the stranger in the middle of his potato salad devastation.

“Can I have that?” asks the stranger. 

Michael hums in his throat, confused. He looks at the stranger, but the stranger isn’t looking at him. His gaze is locked on the potato salad spilled out on the sidewalk. There is a pink flush to his cheeks, but it is different this time. It isn’t modesty. It’s embarrassment.

“If you’re just going to throw it away, can I have it instead?”

The question makes the pit of Michael’s stomach drop. His blood freezes in his veins, and he stares in horror at the stranger before him as he finally takes in the man’s appearance. He hadn’t looked much farther down than the man’s face initially—he had been too preoccupied with how freaking gorgeous the man’s eyes were—but now that he sees it, what is really in front of him, he doesn’t know how he had missed it in the first place.

The stranger is wearing a ratty, old hoodie with sweat stains and dirt stains and holes all over it. His hands are covered in dirt, unwashed. His jeans are stained, too, and they’re thread bare. His shoes don’t match. One is a scuffed old sneaker that must have, at one time, been a pristine white but is not an ugly shade of dirty brown. The other is a boot that has a hole in the bottom of the sole where Michael can see that even the man’s socks are old and dirty and fraying-thin. Every part of the stranger is weathered, from his greasy hair down to the toe of his boot that is starting to crack open.

The stranger is homeless. He shifts uncomfortably underneath Michael’s gaze. After a moment of total silence, he repeats his question, and his voice is a thousand times more timid. More desperate.

“Please, I haven’t—I haven’t eaten in four days.”

“What’s your name?” Michael asks instead.

The stranger’s eyes snap to him finally, and they’re wild.

“What’s it matter? I just want the damn food, and you’re obviously just going to throw it away.”

“My name is Michael, and you can’t have the potato salad.”

The stranger reels back, falling on his hands, like Michael has struck him. He looks so devastated, so betrayed. Michael is startled by the inhumane growl that slips from the stranger’s lips as he launches himself suddenly toward the food spilled out on the sidewalk.

Michael is faster than the stranger. He reaches out and grabs the man when he dives for the potato salad, pulling the stranger to him instead. The stranger fights his hold, but Michael is strong. He doesn’t let up. He has had a lot of practice wrestling Luke into submission over the years they grew up together, and this stranger is nowhere near as big or as bullheaded as Luke.

“It’ll make you sick. You can’t eat it,” says Michael. His lips are nearly pressed to the stranger’s ear. He doesn’t care that the stranger reeks or that the stranger is so dirty that he is probably getting Michael filthy, too. He clings tightly to a man he doesn’t even know. He runs his hands up and down the stranger’s back, comfortingly, like he would do if he were holding Luke like this. “But I have a lot of food at my house, and you can eat that.”

The stranger pushes against Michael’s hold. At first, Michael thinks the stranger is trying to pull away again to get the potato salad. Michael tightens his grip on the stranger before he realizes that the stranger isn’t fighting his hold anymore but is rather shaking, full-bodied like somebody on the verge of tears.

“You can’t just—you can’t just offer me that.”

“I can, and I will,” says Michael.

 Somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledges that this could be a very, very bad idea. He doesn’t even know this stranger. He doesn’t know that this stranger won’t rob him or even kill him. He has heard the horror stories, and he knows what desperation can do to a person. A voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Luke tells him this is a bad idea, that he shouldn’t be stupid enough to bring a total stranger who is _homeless_ to his house where he lives and where he is supposed to be safe, but Michael has made it a habit to ignore Luke. An almost exclusive habit, in fact, and that extends to the likeness of Luke that his mind recreates.

Besides, it’s nearly Christmas, and nobody deserves to eat potato salad off the sidewalk.

“C’mon,” says Michael as he tries to shuffle them into a standing position. The stranger is surprisingly compliant under his direction. “You take those bags, and I’ll take these. My car is in the lot over there.”

It is a leap of faith, but Michael makes the first move toward the parking lot. He doesn’t trust that the stranger will follow him—logically, the stranger has just as much reason, if not more, to be afraid of Michael as Michael does to be afraid of him—but he won’t _kidnap_ the man to his house if the stranger really doesn’t want to go. So Michael starts walking toward the parking lot, and he holds his breath to see if the stranger follows.

In the end, the stranger does but not before shooting one last glance at the potato salad.

 

The stranger is quiet for the duration of the car ride, but Michael doesn’t try too hard to engage him in conversation. It is probably a longer drive to Michael’s house than it would be a walk, but he had driven to the studio that morning, so he had had his car with him at the store.

The radio fills the silence between them. It is set to Michael’s usual station, and when Niall Horan’s latest single comes on next, Michael grins, proud and happy. He had helped Niall with the bridge to that song the last time he had seen him back in February. Niall wasn’t sure back then which songs would make it to the album, but Michael is glad this one did. He is proud that Niall took this one straight to the top of the charts.

It is as they are shuffling the bags on the doorstep of the house that Michael first thinks he probably should have called ahead and given Luke a little warning that he would be showing up with a homeless stranger in tow. Luke hates surprises. Absolutely loathes them, and when he is caught by surprise, he tends to resolve to make Michael’s life a living hell for however long he deems reciprocally appropriate. It is never pleasant for Michael.

However, Luke is also the same person who left all of his wet towels on the floor of the bathroom this morning when he knows Michael _hates_ that, so…

Michael pushes the door open without fanfare. He ushers the stranger inside before him in fear that the stranger might, possibly, haul ass back to the damn store to try to scoop up the potato salad before anybody else does. The stranger seems shifty, like he doesn’t trust Michael, and Michael doesn’t blame him, really, because Michael isn’t sure he even trusts the stranger. 

Still, though, it’s nearly Christmas, and everybody deserves a nice Christmas, even homeless strangers Michael plows over in his haste to escape the horror of an overcrowded supermarket.

The stranger stops two steps inside of the entryway. Michael isn’t quite paying attention to him, so he stumbles right into his back and has to reach out to catch the stranger before they both topple to the floor. Again. Because, for some odd reason, the universe really, really hates Michael.

Or maybe the universe really, really loves Michael, because Michael’s front is pressed to the stranger’s back, and, yes, the stranger smells like dirt and sweat and the streets, but Michael doesn’t really care about that. It is kind of hard to hold body odor against a complete stranger when Michael himself can go days without stepping into a shower, because he is a lazy bastard and because Luke has a bad habit of running out all of the hot water.

So, Michael doesn’t pay the stranger’s odor any mind, and neither does he care that the stranger’s clothes are dirty and pressed against his own freshly laundered clothes. Those things are trivial when compared to the feel of the stranger’s skin against Michael’s palm. The stranger’s wrist is bony, thin like the rest of his body. It is a sickly sort of thinness, one brought on by starvation that might drive a man to scrape food off the sidewalk for a meal. Michael has to push away thoughts of what might have happened twenty minutes ago if Michael had said yes instead of _come home with me_ to the stranger.

“Uh—hi?” squeaks Luke, and the sound of his voice alerts Michael to his presence. Luke is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, apron tied around his waist overtop his old t-shirt. It doesn’t look like the apron has done much good for him, though. There is a smear of ketchup all down the front of his apron, beginning even before it just below the collar of Luke’s t-shirt.

The stranger offers Luke an apprehensive smile, but it is a brief rendition of a socially required nicety. He glances over his shoulder at Michael, clearly regretting his moment of weakness when the thought of good home cooked-food to fill his empty belly had led him to acquiescing to Michael’s demand that the stranger accompany him here.

Michael can’t say he doesn’t blame the stranger for his apprehension. Luke doesn’t make a pretty sight. Ketchup stain aside, Luke looks less than put together. His blond hair is wild atop his head, which isn’t altogether an unusual style for him, but the clumps of flour clinging to the roots of his hair suggest Luke has been in worry-overdrive since Michael left this morning.

Luke always runs a hand through his hair whenever he feels out of his element. Promising to host Calum’s parents and sister for Christmas dinner is so far out of Luke’s element that Michael has decided Luke will never, ever be allowed to drink scotch again. Luke will agree to anything if scotch is involved.

“You’re not fucking him, are you?” asks Luke, blunt. He has always favored a head-first approach to questioning, especially whenever the situation involves Michael and Michael’s questionable choice in bed partners. “It’s Christmas Eve, Mikey. Don’t do what you always do. Not today, at least. There are three hundred sixty-four other days in the year that you can listen to the fucking universe tell you to do whatever—wait. Scratch that. You shouldn’t have a one night stand on the night of Christmas, either. Or Easter. That’s just bad taste, and you promised me you’d get better taste after that William bastard, and I’m still waiting on that to happen, even eleven months later.”

The stranger tenses against Michael then starts to pull away. Michael lets him go, because he doesn’t have any reason to hold on to him. He doesn’t even know the stranger’s name. The stranger stands in the no-man’s land between Luke and Michael. He looks unsure, curling in on himself as if he is trying to make himself so small that he will disappear completely from the room. The sight breaks Michael’s heart.

(Michael blames it solely on the spirit of the season. It is a convenient excuse, and it is much easier to swallow than the idea of maybe, possibly, a-long-ways-down-the-road falling in love with a homeless man. Michael has done a lot of stupid things in his life. He really has, and most of them involve Luke, Calum, and a half-baked idea, but he thinks that falling for a homeless man would be the stupidest one he could ever make.)

“Shut up, Luke. You’re such an ass—and William was an even bigger ass. Completely. Cal took care of it, as I’m sure you remember.”

Michael can’t look at Luke as he speaks. He feels a little trembly all over like he always is whenever the name William pops up in conversation. He balls his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. He glances up at Luke to make sure Luke didn’t notice, but he did. Luke winces upon meeting Michael’s eyes. He looks, for all of the world, regretful, and he opens his mouth to rush out his apologies, but Michael is quicker. He doesn’t want to talk about William or about exactly why it was _Calum_ who had to tell him to fuck off.

“Besides, you were on the phone with me literally half of an hour ago when I was at the supermarket—which, by the way, you owe me so much for that hell of a trip. Some lady nearly clobbered me with me with a ham. My life was in mortal peril!” says Michael, going for dramatics, because he knows Luke hates it when he tells stories like this—and he also knows that Luke secretly hates the fact that he enjoys Michael’s wild stories even more than he actually hates the stories themselves. “But I digress. I ran into this dude on the sidewalk. Literally.”

“Of course,” says Luke. “And the first thing you say to a total stranger is, ‘Hey, c’mon back to my place where my housemate is already a nervous fucking wreck. It’ll be a hoot.’”

“Nobody says, ‘It’ll be a hoot,’ anymore. Like, seriously. _Nobody_ does,” says Michael, because Luke has a habit of latching onto out-dated phrases and trying to work them into as many conversations as he can. Once he is allowed to be successful, he doesn’t let a bad thing die, so he must be stopped now.

“I’m sure somebody does.”

Michael rolls his eyes. Luke is seriously one of the most stubborn people he has ever met. Once he gets an idea in his head, he pounces onto it and doesn’t let up. That is, perhaps, the only reason he is sticking to his guns and actually making Christmas dinner for Calum’s family—a family who Luke himself has never met in the fifteen months he and Calum have been dating.

There is a lull in the conversation, which is probably the only thing that prompts the stranger to find the courage to say, “I think I should probably leave.”

“Nope,” says Michael, on reflex. His mind flashes to the potato salad spilled out on the concrete. “I promised you all of the food you wanted, and I’ve yet to show you the kitchen. Follow me. Bring those groceries, too.”

Luke furrows his eyebrows, looking from Michael to the stranger and back again. Michael owes Luke probably the biggest explanation in the entire world for why he is bossing around a homeless stranger, but that will have to wait. Michael remembers the devastation in the stranger’s voice whenever Michael had denied him the potato salad. The stranger had said he hadn’t eaten in four days. Looking at him—at the frail, starved man—Michael supposes that is probably about right. He’ll be damned if they waste another minute on an argument with Luke that is already ages old.

Michael takes the initiative toward the kitchen, and just like earlier, the stranger follows quietly behind him.

 

The kitchen is a warzone. Plain and simple. Every square inch of the countertop is covered with either dirty pots and pans, stained recipe books propped open to a specific page, or splatters of food which are already well on their way to drying. It will take ages to clean. The Hoods are meant to be here at noon tomorrow.

Michael has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that Luke will somehow con him into cleaning it all up before he goes to bed tonight.

There isn’t much actual cooking going on this evening. Luke wants the food to be fresh off the stove and piping hot whenever they all sit down to Christmas dinner, so all of the dishes now exist as parts ready to be thrown together then cooked. Basically, that means nothing Luke has worked on today is edible now. That is a little bit of a problem for somebody who promised a total stranger all of the food they could possibly want.

Michael cuts his losses. He directs the stranger to deposit the grocery bags on the scarce empty space on the kitchen table. Michael can put them away in a few minutes, after he has begun to fulfill his promise. He starts going through the refrigerator naming off food that won’t be part of Christmas dinner tomorrow. He continues listing through the freezer and his pantry, and when he is all done, he turns back to the stranger.

“I’ll just take a cold-cut ham sandwich with mayo.”

It is possible the most pitiful combination of all of the foods that Michael has listed, and it is definitely Michael’s least favorite choice. It takes him by surprise. This is a man who begged to have a potato salad that had spilled out onto the dirty sidewalk. Michael is offering him full-range over the entire contents of his kitchen—and if the stranger were to want something that Michael hasn’t even listed, he might even head out to get whatever it was… or send Luke. (He’d probably send Luke.)

Yet, the stranger wants nothing more than a simple sandwich.

“A ham sandwich?” repeats Michael.

“With mayo,” confirms the stranger.

“You just want a sandwich?” asks Michael, because he is so hung up on this that he can’t think past it. He can’t even make a move toward getting the stuff out to fix the sandwich in question. If he were in the stranger’s shoes, he would have chosen the steak Luke has been hoarding away in the freezer for the past three weeks, and he would have demanded the half-finished cheesecake, too.

“Yes, just a sandwich,” says the stranger with a small smile on his face. It disappears in the next second. His voice gets soft when he speaks again. His cheeks flush in embarrassment, but he holds Michael’s gaze. “And maybe a shower?”

Michael feels like maybe he has crashed to the ground again, because his entire body jars with sudden hurt. He lets out a surprised gasp. When he tries to breathe in again, he finds it hard to draw air into his lungs. He stares at the stranger—at the dirt on the stranger’s blushing cheeks and the black underneath the stranger’s fingernails—and he thinks that he has never felt such emotion for anybody in his entire life.

Everything wells up in Michael’s chest until it almost overwhelms him. Until it almost consumes him right here for the stranger to see. It is a rush of different emotions—horror, devastation, sympathy, but not pity, _never pity_ —and it is nearly too much for Michael to handle. He has to reach out for the counter to remain standing when his knees threaten to buckle underneath him.

(He kind of wants to kiss the stranger, dirt and all.)

“Fucking hell, man,” says Michael. His voice comes out all strained, like it has been forced through the ringer of one of those old-time washers his grandmother used to use all of the time when he was a boy. “Yes. Yes, you can have a sandwich, and you can have a shower. You can have whatever the hell you want. Seriously.”

 The stranger smiles again, relieved. The blush is still faint in his cheeks, but his eyes shine like Michael hasn’t yet seen, and Michael thinks he is in love with the stranger’s eyes. Michael tries to return the stranger’s smile. It’s infectious. He gets to work on making the biggest damn sandwich he can make. It is the quickest thing he has ever done in his life. He sets a glass of water and the sandwich down in front of the stranger not even five minutes later.

“My name is Ashton, by the way,” says the stranger, finally offering up his name. He doesn’t even look down at the sandwich, but he compliments it all the same. “This is delicious.”

“You haven’t even tasted it yet. How do you know it’s not the worst sandwich in the entire world?”

Ashton shrugs. “You offered a total stranger complete access to all of the food in your kitchen—and a stranger who is starving, might I add. Nobody even offered me a half-eaten burger before when I was laying half-dead on the side of the street. This sandwich has got to taste good.”

A lump rises in the back of Michael’s throat. He doesn’t know what to say. Mostly, though, he can’t get the picture of Ashton alone and helpless and _dying_ out of his head. He wants to hug Ashton tightly and never, ever let him go. Because nobody deserves to be treated like they’re nothing.

(Michael is pretty sure Ashton could be something like _the entire fucking world_ with the way his eyes shine so brightly.)

Fortunately for Michael—or perhaps not—Luke calls his name from the other room. It means he has a nice excuse to offer Ashton a shaky smile in response to such a heart-felt compliment. It also means that he can get away with a horribly inept response without looking like a total douche. For both of those reasons, Michael is relieved. He high-tails it to the living room, leaving Ashton to eat his sandwich in peace.

On the other hand, and Michael doesn’t immediately recognize this unfortunate drawback, it means he has walked himself right into the lion’s den, and there is no turning back.

“What the hell, Michael?!” spits Luke, the exact second the door separating the living room from the kitchen snaps shut. His voice is barely a whisper. He has both of his hands on his hips. He is probably meant to look menacing, but Luke is about as harmless as a fly. Michael has best him in an all-out tickle war before. He is nowhere near as scary as Calum can be. “Who is that? Do you even _know_ him?”

“His name is Ashton, and I told you I met him after I left the store,” says Michael.

He tries to play it cool, tries to pretend like he knows exactly what he is doing, because Luke _hates_ it when Michael just makes it up as he goes. Michael is used to living his life one bad decision after another. Luke should be used to Michael, then. He and Michael have been friends since they were little kids—well, they’ve known each other since then. They spent a year or two absolutely hating each other’s guts before they had bonded over liking the same bands. Essentially, though, Luke has known Michael— _put up_ with Michael—long enough to be used to the fact that Michael always flies by the seat of his pants. That he always makes rash decisions, because the damn _universe_ tells him to do something.

“Oh, so you have a _name_? Tell me, Mike. If every damn homeless person in the city told you their name, would you bring them all to our _home_?!” snaps Luke. He starts out with the same loud whisper he’d adopted earlier, but he quickly loses all pretenses that he actually cares if they’re overheard or not.

“It’s Christmas.”

“It’s fucking Christmas Eve!” bellows Luke as if the particulars really matter. To Michael, they don’t, and he opens his mouth to argue this fact, but Luke speaks over him. “When will you start thinking before you act? Dammit. You do this all of the time. We have a two-year subscription to _National Geographic_ magazine, because the giraffes on the front cover that one time were, and I quote, ‘too cute not to buy, like, ten of.’”

“What do giraffes have to do with this?” asks Michael, thrown off balance. He doesn’t always follow the way Luke’s mind works, even after so long of knowing him. It is disconcerting. He doesn’t like it. Never has.

“We haven’t taken the plastic off a single issue,” says Luke, “and those magazines cost a fortune, practically.”

Michael snorts. He is a music producer, and Luke is a moderately successful—and rising—video blogger. They are certainly not lacking in funds to pay for a magazine subscription that is educational and occasionally showcases pretty pictures of giraffes. Luke’s argument is ridiculous. Michael tells him as much.

“Yeah, because we’re in danger of not being able to pay the bills next month. I mean, get real. Our combined yearly income is enough to buy five houses just like this one.”

“That’s not the point, Michael. You always act before thinking, and it never ends up good for you.”

Michael freezes. All of the blood rushes out of his face. He should have known the conversation would end up here. Most do with Luke lately. He takes an involuntary step back as if the additional space between him and Luke would soak up the next words he knows are going to fall from Luke’s lips. He hopes, in vain, that, maybe, the additional space would take the brunt of the bad memories that spring to his mind at the reminder.

“You did the same thing with William. The fucking _universe_ said he was a good man, and you went along with it.”

“Shut up, Luke.”

But Luke doesn’t. He never does.

“I’m the one who _found_ you. I’m the one who thought you were _dead_. I’m not going through that again, so don’t you fucking tell me that the damn universe told you to bring Ashton here. The universe can fuck off, and Ashton can, too.”

“Ashton isn’t William,” says Michael, but he doesn’t know if that’s true. Not really. All he knows is that Ashton’s eyes light up the entire world and he couldn’t let Ashton starve on Christmas Eve.

“No, but he’s homeless,” says Luke. “He’s liable to rob us or kill us. You don’t know him, and you shouldn’t have brought him here to our house where we live—where we sleep at night.”

Michael clenches his eyes shut. He wants to block Luke out, because Luke has a bad habit of voicing the exact fears Michael tries to ignore. Luke is always that voice in the back of Michael’s mind telling him he should be more careful. That he should think things through befor he leaps head-first into them. Michael doesn’t want to think badly about Ashton. Even more, though, he doesn’t want Luke to be right.

“He was starving,” he says, and he knows his argument is weak. That he is losing steam and credibility, too. “He hadn’t eaten in four days.”

“It’s Christmas Eve. There’s a soup kitchen downtown,” says Luke, ever the practical thinker. “Or you could have given him five bucks for dinner. Or, hell, you could have taken him to get dinner. There were so many more sensible options, so why the hell did you bring him here?”

“Because he was going to eat potato salad off the fucking sidewalk!”

Luke blinks, stunned to silence. Michael’s heart clenches at this particular memory of Ashton, at the real reason none of Luke’s logical alternatives even entered his mind. He has to make Luke understand why, too.

“I spilled the groceries everywhere when I ran into Ashton, and the potato salad busted open. He asked me if he could have it. He was embarrassed, but he asked me anyway. He was going to eat the fucking food right off the ground in front of me, because he was fucking starving, and the potato salad was _right there_.”

Michael pauses to catch his breath. He just continues to stare, in horror, at Michael without making a single effort to speak. That is ok, because Michael isn’t done explaining.

“I told him he couldn’t have it. I mean, what person tells somebody else that they can eat something like that? He tried to fight me for it, because I guess he was so hungry, but I convinced him to come home with me. That he didn’t have to eat that disgusting potato salad, because he could eat whatever he wanted from our kitchen. A lot of our food goes to waste anyway, you know, so I figured it didn’t really matter. Anything was better than the potato salad.”

There is a beat of silence. Michael holds his breath, waiting for another onslaught on his character. It is coming. He knows it is.

“You spilled the potato salad?” repeats Luke. “Mikey, I _need_ that potato salad.”

“That’s what you got from my story? I spilled the potato salad?”

“Fuck, Mikey, you don’t understand.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the first thing we’ve agreed on all day,” says Michael, rolling his eyes. “It’s just potato salad. I mean, it’s not like I lost the bananas or anything, so you can still make your pudding.”

“Look, Calum’s dad really likes potato salad, and I really want _him_ to like me.”

 _Oh_. Michael winces. Luke looks so devastated that Michael is honestly tempted to cower down and offer to go back to the hell that is the supermarket just to pick up another tub of potato salad—almost.

“Enough to eat you?” asks Michael, mock-innocently.

Luke pulls a face, expression halfway between disgusted and exhausted. He is so done with this conversation. His patience for Michael is good on a normal day but now, in the middle of the stress of the holidays, it’s thin. In the next second, though, his anger for Michael dissipates. It’s smothered out like a flame starved for oxygen. He looks more tired than anything.

Michael sighs. He’s not a total bastard, especially not when it comes to Luke. He knows how much Calum means to Luke. He knows that Luke was basically head over heels gone for Calum by their third date and that Luke was practically down on one knee with a hypothetical engagement ring after Calum marched right into the ruins of Michael’s life and vowed to protect Michael forever just because Michael was important to Luke. So, yeah, Michael knows how much Luke wants his relationship with Calum to work out. He knows how much Luke wants to one day go out and buy a real engagement ring for the man.

“Look, forget about the potato salad. Do you love Calum?”

“Of course,” says Luke.

The tone of his voice suggests Michael should already know the answer. Michael does know the answer, but sometimes Luke is stubborn. It helps to spell things out for him in tiny, easy-to-follow steps.

“More than anything else in this world?”

“More than anything else ever,” corrects Luke, impatient. “What are you getting at?”

“Calum’s family is going to love you. I swear, they will, and it’s not going to be because you served fucking potato salad to impress Calum’s father. No, they’re going to love you, because you love Calum more than anything in the history of everything—and he loves you, too. You’re good to him, and the two of you are good together. The best, even. His family is going to see that—hell, they probably already _know_ that—and they’re going to love you for being everything you can be for Calum.”

Luke stares at Michael, silent in thought. Michael is almost reconsidering his plight to soothe Luke’s nerves. Almost. Because Luke always does this whenever Michael is careful with him. Michael hates it. He hates when Luke focuses his entire attention on Michael like Michael is some type of puzzle Luke just has to solve. It makes Michael feel open. Exposed. Vulnerable. It is like Luke is staring straight through him to his very core and seeing all of the brokenness inside of Michael that Michael hides behind tattoos and piercings and hair dye.

“Thanks. I, uh, needed to hear that,” Luke says finally.

Michael nods, quiet. Luke is still looking at him like he can’t see anything else. The weight of his gaze is so heavy that Michael wants to turn away. But he doesn’t. Luke is his best friend.

Luke isn’t a threat.

“If it matters to you so much, have Cal pick up some potato salad on his way over here,” says Michael. He’s not giving ground—because he stands firm behind the fact that Calum’s family will love Luke with or without the food—but he knows Luke will worry himself sick over impressing the people who love Calum so much.

“Invite Ashton to stay for dinner.”

“But I thought—”

“It’s Christmas, isn’t it?” says Luke. He finally looks away from Michael, toward, toward the door to the kitchen instead. “Calum’s family isn’t staying with us. I offered, but they’re going to stay with Calum’s aunt. Apparently, it’s tradition or something. I dunno, but the point is, I cleaned the spare bedroom. Ask Ashton to stay the night.”

 “Luke—”

“I worry about you, okay? But, uh, I _do_ trust you. If you want to be nice to Ashton, well, I suppose the guy could use a good meal, a hot shower, and a good night’s rest.”

 

Ashton doesn’t accept any more food beyond the cold-cut sandwich, no matter how hard Michael tries to convince him otherwise. He asks for the shower again, speaks in a low, timid voice like he is terrified Michael will say no. Michael isn’t even sure _no_ is in his vocabulary when it comes to being nice to Ashton. He leads Ashton down the hallway to the bathroom where he hands Ashton a towel and points out all of the different soaps he can choose from.

“You can leave your clothes in the hamper over there, and I’ll put them through the wash. Just let me go grab some of Cal’s clothes for you to wear,” he says, pointing in the general direction of Luke’s bedroom.

Calum stays at Luke and Michael’s so much that he might as well pay on the bills. He claims it’s because Luke and Michael’s house is closer to the stadium, but Michael suspects it’s because Calum’s own one-bedroom apartment is a sad, empty thing full of expensive trophies and luxury paintings that haunt him with loneliness. Michael has only been to Calum’s place once, and he had never known somewhere to be so oppressively empty. He can’t quite blame Calum for preferring Luke’s warm bed or for keeping all of his clothes in the other half of Luke’s closet.

“Why?” asks Ashton, startling Michael out of his thoughts.

Michael looks up at him, grinning in amusement. He says, “Because my clothes would probably swallow you, and Luke has legs that go on for days. We can’t have you tripping over the—”

“No. Why are you being nice to me?” asks Ashton, and when Michael only stares at him, he adds, “You brought me to your house. You fed me. You’re letting me shower. What do you want from me?”

Michael’s heart shatters in his chest. He swears it does. He thinks that maybe he can even hear it break into tiny, irreparable pieces. Ashton’s eyes are so, so wide, and they’re full of fear that makes Michael’s toes curl, and the tone of his voice suggests he thinks he knows what Michael wants from him—that he thinks Michael wants an easy mouth—and just the idea that somebody would be so _mean_ to Ashton to lead him to assume that is all that he is worth makes Michael want to vomit. Or punch something. Or both at the same time.

“Nothing,” says Michael hastily. His reassurance doesn’t lessen the trepidation shining in Ashton’s eyes. “I don’t—I mean, it’s Christmas, and everybody deserves—”

“Don’t you dare pity me,” snaps Ashton. He tries to sound mean, but Michael doesn’t think there is a cruel bone in Ashton’s body. He kind of reminds Michael of Luke in that aspect. “I’m not somebody’s charity work.”

Michael shakes his head, quickly backtracking. He likes that Ashton still has his pride. That Ashton’s embarrassment is heartfelt and not a show. That Ashton isn’t playing Michael for everything he’s got.

“No, no, you’re right, but I couldn’t let you—”

The word _starve_ is on the tip of Michael’s tongue, but he can’t say it. The verb is appropriate. Ashton himself had said that he hadn’t eaten in days, and his body is so, so thin that his thread-bare clothes hang loosely off his frame. The word _starve_ , though, is scary. Michael doesn’t want to think about what might have happened to Ashton—where Ashton might have been right now—if Michael hadn’t barreled over him in his haste to put as much distance between him and the grocery store from hell.

“Have you ever just, I dunno, met somebody, and the universe tells you that you’ve got to help them? That’s sort of what happened with you. I ran right into you, and you didn’t bless me out or anything. You—fuck, Ashton. You asked _me_ if I was alright when it was _me_ who knocked us both down. I couldn’t not repay your kindness.”

“I’m invisible, Michael,” says Ashton, and Michael flinches. He says it in a matter-of-fact tone, like it is something that he has come to terms with. Like it is something he has been told over and over again—or perhaps it is something that has been _proved_ to him over and over again—and he has learned to accept it as reality, no questions asked. “I don’t have the right to cuss you out.”

“Don’t say that. You’re not—fucking hell. You’re not invisible,” says Michael. He draws in a shaky breath. It feels like there is an invisible shoe grinding the shattered pieces of his heart into dust. He wants to draw Ashton into his arms and never, ever let him go. “Your eyes, they light up the entire room, for one. You can’t be invisible with eyes like yours.”

Okay. Michael doesn’t know why he just admitted that. It’s true, yes, but he normally has a pretty good hold on the things that shouldn’t ever exist outside of his thoughts. Admitting to homeless strangers that they have beautiful eyes is definitely one of those things that Michael should never admit to anybody.

But Ashton offers Michael that small smile of his, and his cheeks heat up to a nice pink color. Michael thinks his admission might have been worth it. He kind of wants to tell Ashton more—to write odes to that particular smile alone—but maybe he’ll space out his compliments. Ashton can’t have gotten many on the streets. He deserves to hear all that Michael can give him now, only it’s probably best to spread them out for fear of scaring Ashton off. Or, worse, leading Ashton to think that Michael doesn’t mean them when, in reality, Michael has never meant anything more.

“And I don’t pity you, you know,” adds Michael as an afterthought. “I mean, I don’t even _know_ you.”

He doesn’t wait for Ashton’s response, mainly because Ashton is still smiling at Michael like Michael has offered him the world wrapped up in a tiny, accidental compliment, and that is a lot of pressure. A storm of butterflies rages in Michael’s stomach. It has been so, so long since he has been struck this hard this quickly—since he has been attracted to another person.

But it has been even longer since somebody has looked at Michael like Ashton is looking at him right now.

It is terrifying, so Michael turns abruptly on his heel and retreats from the bathroom like the coward he is. He can’t face the idea of love. Attraction is one thing. Michael falls in love at first sight half of a dozen times every day. With the barista who works at the coffee shop just down the street from the studio and supplies him his much needed daily jolt of caffeine. With the pizza delivery man at two o’clock in the morning when Michael is starving his ass off but too far in the zone of working on a song that he can barely spare enough time away from his desk to pay for the food. With Luke whenever he does Michael’s laundry after complaining for three days straight about the stench coming from the hamper in the bathroom.

Fickle attraction—love at first sight—is nothing scary. It is nothing in and of itself. Now, however, Michael is faced with a different kind of love. A love that broke him once before and enlisted Calum as his personal bodyguard for life. It’s fucking terrifying.

 

Ashton is still in the shower when Calum shows up at the house, half of an hour late. He has come straight from practice, as he usually does, and even though tomorrow is a holiday, he has been working his ass off all week training with the team. They’re doing a charity match at the end of the year, facing off against their biggest rivals. They have to win, for bragging rights and all.

“Tomlinson strained his calf muscle today. Doc thinks he might not play in the charity match,” says Calum conversationally, strolling into the kitchen where Luke is still preparing tomorrow’s dinner and Michael is keeping him company. Calum is still mostly dressed in what he wore at practice. His white t-shirt is sweat-soaked, sticking to his torso, and his sneakers are untied on his feet. He had left his duffle bag and cleats by the front door. “’S gonna suck. Lenahem is up for the replacement, but he’s virtually useless on the front line.”

Calum slaps Michael on the back as a _hello_ , but he doesn’t linger. He walks around the counter to Luke and drapes himself over Luke’s shoulders. He plants a kiss on Luke’s jaw, his standard greeting.

“It’s still a week until the match. Louis could be healed by then,” says Luke, slightly distracted by trying to turn his head enough to kiss Calum full on the lips. After a couple of failed tries, he is successful. “Assuming, of course, that he follows doc’s orders.”

“Assuming is the key word,” says Calum. He doesn’t have to explain what he means. Louis likes to live life as an adventure. He is almost incapable of sitting still, so it is more likely that Lenahem will play the charity match. “How was your day?”

The question is posed to the general room even if it is spoken right into Luke’s ear, Calum’s lips pressed against Luke’s jaw. Michael is used to being spoken to in such a manner.  It has been fifteen months, and Calum still can’t draw himself away from Luke long enough to ask a mundane question. It’s sweet but annoying at the same time. Michael is just about to tell him that when Luke speaks up.

“I sent Michael to the store to pick up potato salad, and he brought home a homeless stranger instead.”

Calum laughs like he thinks it a joke. It sounds like something Luke would say in jest, because Luke has an odd sense of humor. When neither Luke nor Michael join him, Calum’s laughter dries up. He pushes himself far enough away from Luke to crane his neck and look Michael square in the eye.

“You did what?”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” says Michael, brushing Calum off, because Calum is already going into his over-protective mode. Michael looks at Luke instead. “Besides, you were the one who said he could stay the night, so it’s not all on me.”

“Wait. Wait. You brought a homeless stranger into your house?”

“He’s upstairs taking a shower,” confirms Michael.

“Robbing you, is more like it,” snaps Calum. He draws in a deep breath, and Michael winces. Here comes the lecture. “Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Ever since William, you’ve been making stupid decisions. I thought last week dying your hair fire-engine red just because some douche told you that your punk rock vibe was all for show was a rash decision, but this? This takes the cake.”

“Can we stop relating everything in my life back to William?” asks Michael. He’s tired of being reminded about the bastard of a man who had nearly killed him, and, yes, Michael had been young and stupid and eager for love, but he has learned his lesson. He doesn’t need it shoved in his face every time he does something impulsive that ends up biting him in the ass.

“Can you start thinking before you act?”

“Why don’t you stop double-teaming me while you’re at it?” snaps Michael. He knows he’s being rude—that Calum is just worried about him. It had been Calum who had gone face-to-face with William in the end, and Michael knows Calum would do it again for him in a heartbeat, but he also knows that Calum doesn’t want to ever have to do it again. Michael understands Calum’s concern, but he has already heard this spiel from Luke. He feels more than just a little attacked by Luke and Calum spouting off the same argument.

“We’re not,” says Calum, cautiously, “but even you’ve got to admit that…”

Calum freezes, eyes wide and fixed on a point behind Michael. For a split second, Michael is confused. Calum has this lecture down pat by now. He has memorized it—could probably recite it in his sleep, he has harped on Michael about this so often. There is no reason, therefore, that Calum should just up and forget it. Not by his own volition. It is puzzling until Michael realizes that Calum hasn’t stopped of his own accord but is rather stunned to silence.

Michael glances over his shoulder to find Ashton in a similar frozen state right in the doorway to the kitchen. He looks like a totally different person, all clean and fresh from the shower. Calum’s clothes swamp him. His hair is in wild curls atop his head. The sight nearly steals the breath from Michael’s lungs—and it actually would if not for the absolutely terrified, deer-in-the-headlights expression stretched across his face.

“Ashton?” ventures Calum.

Michael has never heard him sound so… timid. It’s unnatural. He whips his head back around to him. Calum’s face is pale, like a ghost. Michael isn’t sure that Calum isn’t _looking_ at a ghost with the way he looks so morbidly surprised. He takes half of a step toward Ashton but stops abruptly.

“I thought you—what are you doing here?”

Ashton’s eyes get even wider. He takes a step back, nearly out of the kitchen. He shakes his head slowly, purposefully from left to right then back again. Michael thinks he is in denial, like Ashton can’t believe that he is face-to-face with Calum. Michael can’t help but to wonder what could provoke such a reaction. Ashton is a stranger.

“Wait—you know him?” Luke asks Calum, surprised, on behalf of both him and Michael.

Calum doesn’t take his eyes off Ashton, but he answers Luke nonetheless, saying, “Yeah, we grew up together. We were best friends—or, at least, _I_ thought we were.”

Ashton flinches, and he continues to do nothing except stare in horror at Calum.

“I thought you were _dead_ , you bastard,” spits Calum, no longer timid but angry. “Five fucking years you’re gone. Disappeared. You didn’t even— _fuck_. What the hell did I do to make you leave? You didn’t even tell me goodbye.”

“I didn’t tell anybody goodbye,” says Ashton quietly, staring Calum straight in the eye. It is only a brave front. He is curled in on himself  like he was earlier when Luke had been tearing Michael apart for bringing home a complete stranger. It makes him look small. Makes him look like he is _invisible_ , and Michael doesn’t like that.

“Oh, yeah, because that makes everything better,” snaps Calum.

Ashton bites his lips together. He rocks back to the heels of his feet. Michael fears he might make a break for it, that he might spin right around and run as fast as he can for the door and never look back. Ashton doesn’t move. He continues to stare at Calum, frozen.

“Where the hell did you go?”

“Away,” says Ashton, voice almost a whisper. Calum raises his eyebrows at him, prompting him to continue speaking. Ashton glances at Luke and then Michael and then back at Calum. “I had to—I stayed with some friends for a while, and then… the money ran out.”

Ashton doesn’t seem inclined to say anything else. He has said enough, though. Michael stiffens, putting two and two together. Calum’s gaze snaps to Michael, and he waits patiently for the rest of the story. It doesn’t come.

“What does that mean?” Calum has to ask. “What does the money running out mean?”

Ashton’s cheeks go pink in embarrassment. He shakes his head, left then right then left again. Silence fall over the room. It’s stifling. Uncomfortable. Ashton doesn’t look away from Calum, and Calum doesn’t look away from Michael. In the end, it is Luke who speaks up.

“He’s homeless, Cal. Mikey ran into him earlier—quite literally, I think, and, you know Mike, he brought him here to give him food.”

Calum staggers backward against the words, head whipping around to face Ashton with an expression of absolute devastation on his face. He looks just like Luke has just told him Ashton only has three weeks to live. He opens his mouth, ready to say something, but he snaps it shut in the next second. He opens and closes it two more times in the same manner. The air is thick with tension around them all.

“ _Fuck_ , _Ashton_ ,” is the statement Calum finally goes with, and Ashton flinches again. “Homeless?”

“It’s not—it’s not so bad?” chances Ashton, but even he sounds doubtful of his own statement.

“Yes, it is! You’re _homeless_!” bellows Calum. “What the hell happened to you, man? Why didn’t you just go back home?”

“To what?” snaps Ashton. His cheeks are still burning with humiliation, but there is an angry glint in his eyes. He curls his hands into fists at his sides. “There was nothing to go back to. They didn’t want me.”

“They’re your family. Of course, they want you.”

“No, they don’t, and they haven’t since they found out I was gay,” says Ashton as matter-of-fact as anybody could be whenever talking about bad memories that deserve to be forgotten forever. “I was a bad example. They were better off without me.”

Calum chews on his bottom lip. He looks like he wants to disagree with Ashton, but he doesn’t.  He takes a deep breath and lets it out. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, he crosses the kitchen to Ashton, holding the man’s gaze the entire way. Ashton looks like a scared child—like he is still half-tempted to run away—but he doesn’t move. When Calum stretches his arms wide, asking for a hug, Ashton falls right into them.

“I wasn’t—better off without you, that is,” Calum says. His face pressed against Ashton’s shoulder, so his voice comes out a little muffled. “You should have come back home to _me_.”

Ashton gasps out a sob, burying his face into Calum’s neck and clinging to Calum like his life depends on it. Perhaps it does. Calum certainly holds on just as tightly. Ashton looks right at home in Calum’s arms. It is quiet again in the kitchen. Michael thinks that this sight—Ashton and Calum wrapped up in a ball of smiles and tears—is the most heartwarming thing he’s seen all day.

“I missed you so much, Cal,” murmurs Ashton, voice wrecked with emotion. “I thought about coming home to you all of the time, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t—you were better off without me, too.”

“I’m not. Don’t ever think that’s true.”

Ashton nods his head, too overcome by a fresh wave of tears—of happiness and relief and _home_ —to answer in any other way.

 

Calum hardly lets go of Ashton the entire evening. He stays right by Ashton’s side, always within arm’s reach of him. Michael can’t say he blames him. He doesn’t know how he would personally survive five years without Luke. Hell, he can barely survive five hours without checking in on him, and Luke is just as bad with him.

They eat pizza for dinner. The kitchen is a warzone, but Luke doesn’t make Michael clean it. There is only one place still opens that delivers so late on Christmas Eve, and Michael feels guilty for the delivery driver having to work right before the holiday that he tips the man twice as much as he’d usually do. They order so much that they can’t eat it all tonight, but Michael likes cold pizza for breakfast. He likes that Ashton can’t turn down a sixth piece even better.

It takes some convincing, but Calum manages to talk Ashton into staying the night. Luke and Michael offer straight up as soon as it’s late enough that Ashton has to hide a yawn in his elbow. He glances forlornly at the door, believing he has overstayed his welcome but oh so reluctant to leave out into the cold, unforgiving night. Michael pounces almost immediately and offers up the spare bedroom. Ten minutes later, Calum has convinced Ashton to stay.

“There are some extra covers in the closet,” Michael tells him when he shows Ashton to the small, spare bedroom that is right across the hall from Michael’s own.

“This is fine. Thank you.”

“I think Luke probably has another pillow if you want it?” Michael says, and he fusses with the pillows that are already on the bed, trying to decide if maybe he should switch them out for the nice ones that are on his own bed. Ashton deserves the best.

Ashton reaches out and grabs Michael’s wrist. Michael jumps at the contact, startled. Aside from Calum, Ashton hasn’t voluntarily touched anybody all evening. Now, his hands are so, so big around Michael’s wrist, and it radiates heat all the way up his arm. Michael looks up at Ashton, and he kind of wants to kiss him.

“Really, Mikey, this is fine. I haven’t slept in a bed in over two years. This is perfect.”

It’s probably meant to be comforting, but it’s not. It hits Michael like a freight train, painful and sudden and overpowering. Ashton rubs his thumb in a circle on the inside of Michael’s wrist. He gives Michael a small smile. It is a touch apologetic like he knows exactly what his words have done to Michael. Like he knows exactly how deeply they have cut.

Michael wants to hug him, so he does. He uses Ashton’s hand around his wrist to pull Ashton to him. Ashton stiffens immediately against Michael. He relaxes in the next second and falls into Michael’s arms like he’d done to Calum earlier.  

Michael has always been fond of hugs and cuddles. He demands them from Luke or Calum at least once a day—even goes as far as to wiggle himself in the middle of their cuddle session on the couch when they all watch movies together, because he’s lonely. They’re his best friends. They have to love him.

Hugging Ashton, though, possibly trumps every other hug he’s ever had in his entire life. It is odd. They’ve only known each other for a few hours, but Michael feels safer in Ashton’s arms than he’s felt in a long time, in years maybe.  He doesn’t ever want to let go.

But he has to, because Calum bounds into the room.

“’M sleeping in here tonight,” he announces.

Ashton and Michael jump apart as if they’ve been burned. Michael feels his face heat up. He takes a second to himself to get his emotions under control. He feels all over the place. Undone. When he looks at Calum, he knows he hasn’t fooled him. Calum is eyeing him warily, and Michael has to look away before Calum does something totally _Calum_ and call him out on the lovesick expression on Michael’s face.

Michael looks to Ashton instead, but it’s really no better. Ashton’s face is guarded. It reminds Michael of how Ashton had looked on the sidewalk when he had asked for the potato salad. He had been so embarrassed but so guarded then, and he is close to that now, too.

“Am I interrupting something?” asks Calum, mock innocently.

He would pull it off for real if not for the devilish glint in his eyes. He has been around Luke entirely too long. Michael thinks about telling him as much. He kind of wants to shove Calum back out of the room. Nobody should be as smug as he is right now.

“Isn’t Luke going to miss you?” asks Michael.

“Nope,” says Calum, grinning. He looks even more delighted by the turn of events, and Michael already knows he is going to hate whatever else Calum has to say. “He’s sleeping with you, and you know what that means.”

Michael groans. He kind of hates Calum right now. Luke, even more.

“Luke’s damn icy toes.”

 Calum grins wider.  Ashton looks between the two of them with trepidation. There is a smile tugging at the corners of his lips like he is amused but doesn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Michael catches his eye and winks. Ashton takes it as permission to stop hiding his smile, and it is beautiful on his face. Michael wants to kiss him again.

“Merry Christmas!” cheers Calum.

Michael flips him off on his way out of the bedroom. Calum’s bark of laughter follows him out. Michael thinks about refusing to leave, about telling Calum that he is not going to be the one to share a bed with Luke tonight. But he doesn’t. He has seen how clingy Calum has been all evening. He has gathered how close of friends Calum and Ashton used to be, and he knows the potential they have to be as close again, and Michael can’t take that from either of them.

Out in the hallway, Michael considers sneaking into Luke’s empty bedroom just to escape his fate, but he doesn’t. Luke has a tradition of sharing a bed the night before Christmas. He done it every year as a kid with his brothers and then with Michael when they had lived together during their university years and now with Calum. It should be Calum again tonight, but Ashton is more important. None of them trust that Ashton will be here in the morning, left to his own devices.

Luke is already waiting in the bed when Michael walks into the room. Michael changes quickly into a pair of sleeping pants. He thinks about grabbing a shirt, too, but it’s dark in here already. It isn’t like Luke hasn’t seen the ugly scars on Michael’s back. Hell, he is the one who helplessly tried to hold them together when they were fresh and Michael was slowly bleeding to death.

Michael doesn’t grab a t-shirt, because it’s pointless to hide from Luke when Luke already knows him so well. Michael crawls underneath the covers next to Luke, who immediately flops over on top of him. He curls around Michael until his toes poke against Michael’s shins. They’re freezing cold, and he wiggles them in between Michael’s legs like he knows Michael hates. Michael mumbles out a string of curses.

“Missed this, Mikey,” Luke murmurs. “’M sorry about what I said earlier about William and Ashton. I was out of line. Ash isn’t that bastard.”

He’s already halfway asleep. His fingers dig into Michael’s ribcage, ghosting against the edge of one of the scars that twist around Michael’s back. Michael wants to shudder against it, but this is Luke. It’s not scary, him touching it. Michael leans farther into Luke’s hand instead of instinctively away from it until the pads of Luke’s fingers cover the edge of the scar like a safety blanket.

 “You were worried,” says Michael.

He likes this Luke best of all, because Luke is never more honest than he is just moments before he gives into sleep. Luke is his best friend in the entire world. He is the one who walked in that day eleven months ago to find Michael a beaten and bloodied mess on the floor of this very house. Michael can’t fault him for being scared that a total stranger might do the same thing or worse.

“Tell him t’stay forever,” Luke mumbles. He nudges his nose into Michael’s chin, sleepy but completely serious.

“Go to sleep, Lukey.”

Luke raises himself up onto his elbow so that he’d be able to look Michael in the eye if there had been enough light in here for them to see each other. It’s too dark for that, but Luke doesn’t settle back against Michael.

“It’d be perfect,” says Luke. His voice is still drenched in exhaustion, but he articulates each syllable to make sure that Michael understands him—to make sure Michael knows how serious he is. “He needs a place to stay while he gets on his feet, and we can give that to him. Between you and me and Cal, we’ll take real good care of him.”

“You’re talking crazy,” says Michael, but his heart skips a beat at how _perfect_ that does sound. He has to be practical, though, because he knows Luke is loose with his decisions when he is as tired as he is right now. “We just met Ashton.”

“Cal’s known him forever,” says Luke. He falls back against Michael’s chest, and Michael thinks he might have fallen right asleep. He hasn’t. “Ash looks at you like you hung the moon, and, hell, Mikey, that’s how you deserve to be looked at.”

Michael squeezes his eyes shut, letting Luke’s words wash over him. He wants so bad to believe them. He does, because Luke never said this about William. Luke never said anything _nice_ about William, and Luke was right about that bastard in the end, so Michael hopes that Luke is right again.

But Michael can’t get his hopes up. The last time he’d gotten his hopes up, he’d been thrown through the drywall between the living room and the kitchen and beaten half to death. He knows that Ashton isn’t William. He does. But the idea of love—serious, life-long love—is terrifying.

Luke falls asleep, for real, before Michael realizes he probably should have told Luke that he is imagining things that aren’t even there.

 

Luke’s dinner goes over well, and the Hoods love him like their own son, just like Michael had expected.

(“You love him more than me, don’t you?” Calum accuses his mother whenever he is sent to do up the dishes after they’ve eaten their weight in food.

She doesn’t answer him, only pats his cheek fondly, and ushers him to the kitchen. Michael tells Calum later that _yes, they do_.)

 Michael smirks victoriously at Luke across the living room. Luke rolls his eyes at him whenever Calum’s father’s attention is temporarily shifted from Luke to Calum’s mother. Michael barks out a laugh that he hides in his glass of Christmastime wine. Next to him, Ashton snorts in laughter, too. Michael glances over at Ashton, and the two share a conspiratorial grin. Calum’s family is so gone for Luke.

Luke isn’t the only hit with the Hoods. Ashton, too, had been welcomed with opened arms. Predictably, he had initially been reluctant to attend the dinner.

(“I should leave,” Ashton says about half of an hour before the Hoods are supposed to arrive.

He glances toward the clock and then toward the door to the kitchen. Luke had absolutely refused to let any of them help him with the dinner, but he’d also asked them to keep him company while he finished up the dinner. Michael and Ashton are seated at the table, wisely staying out of Luke’s way. Calum, on the other hand, had convinced Luke to let him at least stir the pots on the stovetop while Luke does whatever else he needs to do.

“You shouldn’t,” says Luke.

“Nope,” agrees Calum, glancing over his shoulder at Ashton. “My parents are looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Did you mention the homeless part?” asks Ashton, cheeks flushed in residual humiliation. He drops his gaze to the table. “That typically changes people’s opinions.”

Calum bites his lips together, glancing at Luke and then Michael before returning his gaze to Ashton.

“We’ll talk about that later, but no. I didn’t. It doesn’t matter. I told my mother this morning about running into you again. Thought you might want a little forewarning when she tackles you into a hug and doesn’t let go.”)

That is, in fact, exactly what happened. Mrs. Hood had taken one glance at Ashton, who’d been hiding behind Michael, and engulfed him in the biggest hug she could manage. Ashton had glanced at Michael over her shoulder, unsure of what to do. Michael had smiled encouragingly at him, and that’s all it had taken for Ashton to give into the hug and soak it up for all it was worth.

All in all, it is a good dinner, and the Hoods leave with full bellies and promises to return. It’s a success. When the door finally closes behind the last of Calum’s family, Luke starfishes across the couch, face down and limbs stretched out wide. He groans loudly. Calum sits down next to him on the edge of the seat and rubs his hand up and down Luke’s back.

“I told you they’d love you,” he says.

Luke turns his head so that he can look at Calum with one eye. His face is still smashed against the cushion, so his voice is muffled when he speaks again.

“Just wait ‘til you meet my family. You’ll understand my pain then.”

Calum barks out a laugh. He doesn’t look terrified at the idea. Rather, he seems happy about meeting Luke’s parents. Perhaps it is because such a meeting might take place on Australian soil, a place Calum hasn’t been to since he was a kid. Or perhaps it’s just the idea that his and Luke’s relationship is finally moving in the right direction after fifteen long months.

“Yeah, he’s got two brothers,” says Michael, grinning as he brings Calum face-to-face with reality. It is one of Michael’s favorite things to do. Calum spends so much of his time with his head in the clouds—talking about future victories and trade opportunities and career advancements that will let him travel the world—that he sometimes forgets what is right in front of him.

“It’s going to take a little more than that to scare me away,” says Calum, grinning. He leans down so that he can press a kiss to Luke’s temple. Luke gets greedy, though, and their lips touch instead in a brief kiss. Calum is still smiling when they part. His next words are meant for Michael, but he doesn’t move away from Luke. “Besides, you’re scarier than anybody else Luke could possibly throw at me.”

Michael feels a rush of pride go right through him. Luke is his favorite person in the history of forever—even if Michael is sometimes tempted to throw Luke off the second floor balcony—and it’s Michael’s purpose in life to make sure that he doesn’t settle for anything less than the absolute best. It’s his job to make sure that whatever man Luke dates knows how precious Luke is. Respects it. Honors it.

The thing is, though, Calum is so sincere in his trepidation of Michael, but Michael knows Calum has dozens of reasons to believe Michael to be no threat. Michael wasn’t strong enough to fight off William, for heaven’s sake. It had been Calum who’d kicked the bastard to the curb once and for all.

Michael is in awe that Calum is concerned that Michael would gut him if he didn’t treat Luke right. But Michael would walk through hell for Luke. Barefoot, even. Michael can let himself get pushed around, but he’ll never let anybody hurt Luke. Ever.

“I’ll have your ass if you mistreat him, Calum, and you’d better remember it.”

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten,” says Calum, grinning down at Luke. It’s a fond grin that steals the breath from Michael’s lung and makes Michael so pitifully jealous that he almost can’t see straight. “But I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not even here,” sulks Luke, but he preens whenever Calum laughs and ducks down to place a soft kiss on the top of his head. The mock-pout returns as soon as Calum sits back up. Luke turns away from Calum. “Tell ‘em, Ash. Make them be nice to me. They’ll listen to you.”

Ashton’s eyes go wide. He stutters around, glancing from Calum to Michael and back again like he doesn’t know which side to take. It’s a heart-warming sight. Michael doesn’t even have to try too hard to see that Ashton fits right in with them all. Luke turns to him whenever he needs back up in an argument, and Calum looks at Ashton like he’s the greatest person to ever walk the earth. Michael doesn’t want Ashton to leave for the rest of forever.

“Stop using Ashton to do your dirty work,” says Michael, and it’s worth Luke’s huff when Ashton shoots Michael the biggest smile in the entire universe of smiles. Michael gives him one back before he glances at Luke. “I was standing up for your honor. You should be grateful.”

“Cal has seriously bear-hugged you into submission before,” says Luke.

It’s in jest—because Luke knows just how far Michael would go for him. He has witnessed it, in fact, over their numerous years of friendship when, before Calum—and before William, too—Luke had gone through a streak of one-night lovers, and some of those lovers hadn’t been satisfied with just one night. Michael had been the one to scare everybody off, with his dyed hair and tattoos and piercings and general ability to fool anybody into thinking that Luke was hi partner who was caught up in a love affair. Luke, therefore, knows that Michael has his back, even though his words suggest otherwise, and he winks at Michael to make sure Michael knows that, too.

“Cal is part koala,” says Michael, grinning.

He doesn’t really think he’s brave enough to take Calum on—not with how Calum had fought Michael’s demons—but Calum thinks so, and that’s all that really matters. Besides, Michael isn’t too concerned about Calum hurting Luke. Unlike the string of nobodies who came before him, Calum lives and breathes for Luke.

“Koalas can be vicious.”

“And so can you,” quips Michael. Then, because he can’t quite stop himself when he’s ahead—or maybe he can’t listen to the tiny voice in his head that is screaming _that’s enough!_ —he adds, “Or have you forgotten?”

The smile fades from Calum’s face. His eyes snap down to Michael’s ribs where, underneath the black pull-over hoodie, a long, jagged scar twists along Michael’s skin. It’s not visible now, of course, but Calum knows it’s there. He had watched, stone-faced and holding Luke’s hand who had been holding Michael’s hand, as the doctors had sewn Michael’s skin back together.

The humor leaves the room, zapped. Tension hangs heavy. The air is thick with it. Michael doesn’t like the weight of Calum’s remorseful gaze. He folds his arms across his chest as if the simple gesture could make everybody forget what lies underneath his clothes. As if it could force everybody to forget the ugly scar and the terrifying memory of how it’d came to be. He shifts away from Calum when, after a few stiff moments, he still feels open and raw and vulnerable and a little bit like the scared, dying man he had been when the scar had been bleeding fresh.

Michael steps back into Ashton. Startled, he stumbles, but Ashton catches him, one hand on Michael’s hip and the other on his shoulder. Michael freezes at the contact, muscles rigid, as the bad memories play on repeat in his mind.

The fists.

The sneer.

The pain.

The wall.

The blood. 

Luke yelling his name, screaming it at the top of his lungs.

Calum barreling in like a bullet out of a gun and tackling the monster to the floor, saving Michael. Having Michael’s back even though he’d only known Michael for a few weeks at that point. Protecting Michael like a brother even though they’d barely bonded over anything beyond music and a mutual love for _FIFA_. 

Everything comes rushing back to Michael. It all hits him like a punch to the gut. He feels like he might vomit.

Ashton’s hold on him, though, is strong. Michael himself isn’t, and he should be afraid of Ashton’s strength. He hardly knows Ashton, and Ashton doesn’t know the first thing about Michael’s awful, horrid, painful past. He shouldn’t seek refuge from Ashton. He shouldn’t even want to.

But the universe had told him to trust Ashton, and Calum was Ashton’s best friend once upon a time. Michael figures all of that has to count for something, so he falls into Ashton’s open arms, Michael’s back to Ashton’s front, and he pretends like his knees don’t go weak as he watches Luke grab for Calum’s hand like a drowning man reaching out for a personal floatation device.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Calum whispers into the thick tension between them. His forehead is wrinkled, and he’s chewing on his bottom lip. Michael hates this look on him. Hates how worried Calum gets about him when it had been Michael’s own stupidity that had brought it all on. “Fucking hell, Mike. Please don’t joke about that.”

Michael wishes he were anywhere else in the entire world—gone, even. Anything has to be better than this moment in time. Anything has to be better than Michael face-to-face with a tearful Luke and a fearful Calum.

“You nearly _died_ ,” says Calum. He clings to Luke as tightly as Luke is clinging to him. They are one in their concern for Michael. In their fear for Michael. His voice is low, but it turns dangerous with the next words. “You nearly fucking died, and I nearly beat that bastard to death—still might, honestly, if I meet him out on the street.”

“Cal—” croaks Michael.

“ _No_ , Mikey,” snaps Calum, cutting him off. He sounds hysterical, like he’s half of a second away from breaking down before them all just by the mere memory of Michael bloodied and beaten and broken. “You don’t understand. I can’t sleep at my own place, because I’m terrified that Luke is going to call me at three in the morning and tell me that somehow that bastard is right back in your life, and you’re on your way to the fucking emergency room nearly dead—or, _worse_ , already dead.”

“Cal—” says Michael again, softer and heartbroken, because this is news to him. But he’s not given a chance to say anything else.

“You’re Luke’s favorite person, and that makes you my favorite person, too. You don’t even realize the affect you have on people. You don’t see yourself right. You’re always looking for signs from the fucking universe when all you’ve really gotta do is open your eyes to what’s right in front of you. Fuck, Michael. You are so, so loved, and you don’t even realize it, because William fucked you up so badly, and I’m terrified that you’re not going to find what you want from the universe—that the universe isn’t going to tell you the God’s honest truth: that you are wonderful, brilliant, and you deserve the fucking world.”

Ashton’s hand tightens on Michael’s shoulder, but Michael hardly realizes it. He’s too stunned by Calum’s confession that he can barely function enough to remain standing. Calum is looking at Michael like Luke looks at Michael sometimes, with such intensity that Michael thinks Calum can see right through him to his very soul. It’s disconcerting, this feeling that somebody else has full-access to the core of his being, and Michael wants to hide away from Calum’s gaze.

“I know Luke and me are overbearing sometimes,” says Calum after a moment. He’s quieter now, more cautious, but his gaze still penetrates straight through all of Michael’s defenses. “And I know that we overreacted at first when we learned about Ashton, but we don’t want you to get hurt again. Ever. If that means hounding you with the same overprotective bullshit, we’re going to do it. Every single time. Because, the thing is, Mikey, you can listen to the universe all you want. You can look for all of the signs. But the universe nearly fucked you over in the worst of ways, and we’ll be damned if we let that happen to you again.”

“Everything he said,” adds Luke. His voice is a little strained, but he probably deserves credit for being able to sound semi-normal when he’s on the verge of crying. “We love you, Mikey. Please, don’t ever forget that.”

 _I don’t think I could_ , thinks Michael, but he doesn’t say it out loud. He can’t. It’s physically impossible for him to speak around the lump in his throat. So he does the next best thing. He steps out of Ashton’s hold. Ashton lets Michael go, no questions asked. No demand to know what’s going on. Michael is so, so grateful, because he isn’t sure he’d have the same restraint if he were in Ashton’s shoes.

It probably wouldn’t hurt to tell Ashton—because if Calum has anything to say about it, Ashton is going to stay around for a long, long time to come. Hell, Michael doesn’t want Ashton to leave, either, and that’s two to one, really. Or, rather, three to one, because what Calum wants, Luke will provide. So, yeah. Michael doesn’t think Ashton is going to go away, like, ever, and he probably deserves to know the sordid history that has left Michael scarred and Luke and Calum so concerned about Michael that they bully away any potential threat just to keep him safe.

So, he’ll tell Ashton. He _will_. Just not right now. Because, now, he needs to tell Luke and Calum just how much they mean to him. He can’t say it out loud, not around the lump in his throat that’s still not disappeared. He stumbles over to Calum and Luke instead. He launches himself on top of both of them, wrapping his arms around both of his favorite people in the entire world. They just get him. They hear the voice inside of Michael’s head that Michael doesn’t ever let out, and they silence it—even when Michael doesn’t ask them to.

Luke and Calum shift so that they can hug Michael back, so that they can cling to him like he’s liable to disappear at any second, and they can’t have that. They can’t let Michael go. Michael doesn’t want to let go, either. He digs his fingers into Luke’s side, and Luke doesn’t complain like he usually would. He only maneuvers Michael’s hand until his fingers are pressed into softer skin then lets Michael do as he wants. He’ll take whatever Michael wants to give him, and he’ll give back just the same, holding onto Michael tightly.

Michael settles against Luke, Calum partially on top of him. Calum’s lays his hand right across the jagged part of Michael’s scar, safe and protective like always. Michael looks over Luke’s shoulder to meet Ashton’s gaze. They’re full of concern, Ashton’s eyes. He offers Michael a warm, albeit shaky, smile, and Michael doesn’t feel quite as vulnerable anymore.

 

Later, after they’ve all spent the rest of the day sprawled out in the living room watching old Christmas movies on cable, Michael rushes upstairs to the toilet. His bladder is filled to the brim, almost overflowing. One wrong move, and he’ll piss all over himself. It is the last thing he wants to do in front of Ashton, who was nice enough to let Michael snuggle up to him when Calum and Luke refused to make more room on the couch.

(Truthfully, Michael didn’t fight Luke too hard whenever Luke gave him a plain and simple _no, Mikey_ after Michael had asked ever-so-nicely _can I rejoin your cuddle?_ Michael had pouted, for show of course, but it’d gotten him nowhere. Apparently, he had seceded his right to a cuddle with Calum and Luke when he’d loudly proclaimed Luke’s farts stank and promptly stole the television remote, because he wasn’t going to watching _Frosty_ -the fucking- _Snowman_ for the third time.

So they’d tossed him to the curb, but that’d been all right. Ashton had been there with open arms, ready and willing to cuddle with Michael.)

“You should tell him to stay.”

Michael jumps, splashing water everywhere. He had just turned on the tap to wash his hands. There is nothing more unattractive than somebody who doesn’t immediately wash their hands after they use the toilet. It is his life philosophy, basically, right after not touching used tissues and using his left hand to open any and all public doors. Germs are icky.

Luke has always had impeccable timing. Michael shoots him a glare as he grabs for the towel hanging on the rack. He uses it to dab at the wet spots on the front of his shirt then to mop up the mess on the counter.

“Ever heard of knocking?”

“I dunno. Have you? I mean, you’ve walked in on me and Cal eight times over the past two weeks alone. Seriously, knock before you enter my bedroom. We might be busy.”

Michael shrugs. “I’ve probably seen it all by now anyway. There are only so many new positions Cal can convince you to try.”

Luke’s face goes beet red. It is his turn to glare at Michael, who is grinning victoriously. Embarrassing the hell out of Luke is one of Michael’s favorite past times, especially when he can use Calum against him. He hates wasting an opportunity when its served to him as neatly as this.

“Tell Ashton to stay,” repeats Luke, a little more flustered this time as he is trying to divert the topic of conversation away from his sex life. “He needs somewhere to live while he gets back on his feet. Calum was going to offer his place, but he’s always over here, and he didn’t want Ashton to be all alone. We’re always here. Cal’s here, too, and we’ve got a guest room that nobody has used in the past six months.”

“Have you talked to Ashton about this to see what he might want?”

“That’s why I’m telling you to tell him to stay. It’s his choice, of course, but it has to come from you.”

“Why?”

Luke grins. “Because he feels like he failed Calum, and he doesn’t know me, but he looks at you like the sun shines out of your ass. You’re the one he’ll say yes to.”

 Michael blinks. He rushes to think of a thousand reasons why this should not fall on his shoulders, but he can’t come up with a single one. The thing is, he doesn’t want Ashton to leave. He hasn’t wanted Ashton to leave since the moment Ashton walked through the entryway. He just hadn’t seriously considered the idea that Ashton might not have to leave. That Luke might corner him in the bathroom upstairs and demand that he tell Ashton to stay.

“Hell, you’re the only one he won’t say _no_ to.”

Michael wants so, so badly to believe Luke’s words—to believe that Luke is once again right—but he can’t get his hopes up.

“You’re awfully confident in my ability to persuade Ashton to say yes,” says Michael doubtfully. “I still think Calum might be the better choice. He used to be best friends with Ashton. I’ve only known Ashton for a few minutes longer than you, and we both know how much of a smooth-talker Calum can be. He convinced Tomlinson it’d be a good idea to hit on Harry when everyone knew good and well Tomlinson had no shot in hell as long as Niall was still in the picture. Calum did it without even getting Tomlinson stone-cold drunk! Surely, Cal would be the better person to talk to Ashton.”

Luke frowns at Michael, and Michael tries not to shift underneath Luke’s heavy, critical gaze. He hates it when Luke does this. When Luke goes all silent for a few measured seconds and does nothing except stare at Michael like he’s looking straight into his soul.

“Why are you so afraid of asking Ashton to stay? I thought you’d be all up for it, gone for him as you are.”

 “I’m not ‘gone for him,’” Michael says petulantly, except he is. He totally is, and Luke knows it.

“Mike.”

Michael sighs. He drops his gaze to the floor at his feet and mutters, “What if he says no?”

Because that’s just it. Ashton could say no. He doesn’t know Michael, not really. They’ve only just met, and Ashton is in a difficult situation. He lives on the streets, and he is accustom, apparently, to starving, and he was so, so surprised when Calum’s mother had embraced him like a long-lost son. Ashton is precious. He doesn’t even know it, but Michael would love to be able to prove it to him, only Ashton might not give him the chance.

Michael hasn’t feared losing anybody in a long, long time. Not since William. Longer than, probably. It is terrifying, the thought of losing Ashton. Hearing Ashton utter _no_ when Michael asks him to stay is even scarier.

“Mike,” says Luke, stepping forward and putting both of his hands on Michael’s shoulders. He waits until Michael looks up at him. Until Michael is brave enough to meet his eyes. “He’s gone for you, too.”

“He’s not,” whispers Michael.

He tries to step back, away from Luke, but he is trapped by the counter. He can’t move. He can’t escape. Luke digs his fingertips into Michael’s shoulders. Michael doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to hear what Luke has to say, because it’s exactly what he so intimately wishes were true. He can’t handle to get his hopes up only to have them to be squashed.

“He is,” says Luke. His voice is soft and comforting, and it’s all too tempting for Michael to believe him. “Mikey, he asked if you were okay earlier, after we—you know—talked about what happened with William. Ashton asked if you were okay, and we told him that we couldn’t tell him the story, and he said that’s not what he asked. He just wanted to know if you were okay. He was—he looked quite distraught at the idea of you not being okay.”

Luke stops talking for a moment, letting the weight of his words settle over the room.

“He didn’t give a damn about anything but how you were. If that’s not being gone for you, then I don’t fucking know what is,” says Luke finally. “You spend your entire life looking for signs from the universe, and they’re screaming at you now. Ashton is falling in love with you—and you are him, too.”

“That’s—that’s ridiculous,” stutters Michael.

“Don’t lie to me.”

Michael snaps his mouth shut, because he can’t lie to Luke. Not about something as major as this. He owes Luke his life. He can tell Luke that he sounds like a dying hyena when he sings in the shower, and he can tell Luke that he looks stupid in the brand new yellow snapback he loves so much, but he can’t lie to Luke about this. Not when his heart hurts at the idea of Ashton leaving him. At the idea of Ashton starving on the streets. At the idea of never seeing Ashton again.

“What do I do?” asks Michael instead. If he can’t lie to Luke, he might as well turn to him for help instead. Luke has always been good at having his back. “What do I say?”

Luke smiles at him. He lets go of Michael’s shoulders and draws him into a hug instead, calming Michael’s nerves. He presses a kiss to Michael’s cheek then speaks directly into Michael’s ear, soft and comforting again.

“The truth, but I’d probably start with William, if I were you.”

 

Michael finds Ashton, alone in the guest room, a little while later.

“I dated a monster named William once.”

Ashton looks up from the socks he had been carefully folding at the foot of the guest bed. They’re what he had worn yesterday when Michael had found him, and they have finally gone through the wash. All of his clothes look and smell refreshed, but not even laundry detergent can fix the wear-and-tear from the streets. Michael wants to tell them that there is no need to be careful with these clothes, that he can throw them away, because Michael has already talked with Luke, and Ashton doesn’t have to go anywhere. Ever.

But he doesn’t say anything about that yet. There is a story he needs to tell, and if he doesn’t do it now, when it’s fresh in his mind and doesn’t hurt as much as it usually does, he won’t do it. Michael knows himself. He knows how well he can put things off until it’s physically impossible to do so and then finding a way to still not do them. He has to be smarter than himself. Just this once.

The universe brought Ashton into Michael’s life for a reason. Maybe Luke was right a little while ago, and maybe Luke was even right last night. Maybe Ashton looks at Michael like Michael hung the fucking moon, because maybe Michael saw the intimidating glint of adoration in Ashton’s eyes earlier when Michael had been dog-piled with Calum and Luke. Maybe Ashton is the universe’s way of apologizing for royally fucking up with William.

(Or, maybe, it’s not the universe at all, but Michael doesn’t really care. He kind of thinks Ashton is the one who hung the moon, and if the universe doesn’t agree with him, Michael doesn’t actually give a damn. He is falling for Ashton, and it is scary as fuck, but he is not turning back. He refuses to turn back.)

“It was a few months ago—well, I mean, we hooked up the first time about a year and a half ago. Met a bar, you know, all stereo-typical like.”

Michael strolls over to the edge of the guest bed and sits down, facing Ashton. He gestures for Ashton to do the same. This story might take a while. Ashton senses that. He doesn’t hesitate. He drops his folded socks to the bed before sitting himself down, face-to-face with Michael. He folds his right leg underneath him. If he were to lean forward barely an inch, he and Michael would be touching. It is a far cry from the reclusive stranger that had begged Michael for the spilled potato salad.

“You don’t have to tell me, you know,” says Ashton, quietly. He smiles comfortingly at Michael. He looks like an angel, all serene and well-cared for in the clothes he had borrowed from Calum. “We all have our demons.”

“We do,” agrees Michael, “but I kind of want to talk about it?”

“Then I’m all ears.”

Michael nods, but he doesn’t say anything immediately. Given the chance to speak, he feels uncharacteristically shy. He isn’t a soft-spoken individual, typically. Never has been, and his mouth has gotten him into more than just his fair share of scrapes. But William had changed him. William had made him silent. He doesn’t want to be anymore.

Ashton, sensing Michael’s hesitation or maybe his trepidation on the edge of oblivion, reaches out and lays his hands on top of Michael’s. It is a soft touch at first. Michael jumps at the contact, startled. He looks up to meet Ashton’s eyes and sees that hanging-of-the-moon adoration shining back at him. It gives him the courage he needs for the reality of this story. He turns his hands over in Ashton’s so that they can touch palm-to-palm.

Ashton’s hands are big against Michael’s own, and they make Michael feel safe. He appreciates Ashton so much. Not for the first time, he is glad that he wasn’t watching where he was going yesterday evening as he had been fleeing the store from hell. He is glad that he met Ashton.

“William was—I dunno. I really don’t, but, I guess, in the beginning, he was good to me. A little too good, maybe, because he fucked me up so quickly. There were small, almost thoughtless danger signs that I just didn’t see for the longest time. He’d, uh, take me out to these nice, fancy restaurants, but he wouldn’t let me order my own food. He’d have his hands all over me in private, but he’d never touch me when we were in public and especially not if we were with his friends. Yeah, it was strange, and, yeah, I fought him on it, but he took me to bed to make it up to me instead.”

Ashton’s hands tighten around Michael’s, almost painfully so. Michael stops his story. He rubs his thumbs along the curve of skin between Ashton’s first finger and thumb on both hands. Ashton is looking at Michael like Calum and Luke do in the darkness of long, scary nights when the memories of William are too close to the surface of Michael’s skin that they stain Michael’s dreams, twist into nightmares that have him screaming awake. That force Calum and Luke into Michael’s bed, one on each side like Michael’s own personal shields battling his demons. That make Calum and Luke hold Michael. In those moments, they look so heartbroken over Michael’s brokenness, and they vow, quietly when they believe Michael has fallen into an exhausted sleep, to destroy the monster that made Michael scared of his own mind. Of his own dreams. Of his own self.

Ashton, now, is looking at Michael like he wants to hug him until forever comes and then some.

(Michael, for his part, kind of wants to kiss Ashton right now and never stop. But he doesn’t. The universe tells him it’s all wrong. It’s not the right setting for it.)

Michael skips over some of the more painful memories. He isn’t ready to admit them to Ashton. He is not ready to talk about how he slowly gave ground. How he surrendered control of everything one day at a time. How he had ended up secluded from everybody in the entire world except for William.

“The first time he hit me, he blackened my eye, and I hit back. The second time, I didn’t hit back. He bloodied my nose, and I ran away to Luke and told him I’d pissed some up-and-coming artist off at work. The third time… I lost count.”

But he didn’t. Not really. He remembers every single fist he took from William. Every slap. Every kick. Everything in between. He remembers them all, because he can’t forget. If he starts to forget, his nightmares remind him. They claw at him, seep into his dreams until there is nothing except haunting pains of the past. Until he is left a screaming mess in a tangle of sheets and the walls are closing in on him.

But he can’t tell Ashton this. He can’t even tell Luke and Calum this. He thinks that, maybe, Luke and Calum might know already. They had been there in the end. They had been the ones to fight Michael’s demons when Michael himself was too defeated to carry on.

“About a year ago—well, more like eleven months, but, really, what’s the difference between a few weeks? But, yeah, about a year ago, I had enough. I was hurting all of the time, and I hardly ate, and I’d been admitted to the hospital three times within fifteen days. The nurses kept asking questions that I didn’t want to answer, so I knew I couldn’t go back.”

Michael stops, realizing that he had misspoken.

“Well, I said I’d had enough, but that’s not quite right. _Luke_ had had enough. I didn’t live here with him then. I lived with William, because William said it’d be perfect, the two of us playing house. Luke was tired of not seeing me. Of me blowing off plans because William wanted to do something else. Of two-minute coffee runs that I could scarcely afford. So Luke got tired, and he confronted me, and that was it. I moved in here.”

But it wasn’t it. Not in reality. No. There had been a lot of yelling on both of their behalves. Mostly Luke, though. Luke, who had been so sick of barely seeing his best friend. Who had been so worried about the bruises that kept popping up and never seemed to go away.

He had cornered Michael in the studio one day. It was the only place Michael wasn’t overwhelmed by William, and Luke had taken his opportunity, sweet-talking Niall Horan into borrowing Michael for _like, five minutes, I swear, Niall, and then he’s all yours_. Luke had locked him and Michael into one of the writing rooms in the back of the studio, and he had demanded to know why there were stitches along Michael’s cheek. Why there were fresh marks on Michael’s neck that looked exactly like the shape of William’s hand.

Michael hadn’t wanted to speak to begin with. It was none of Luke’s business, because _I’m doing fine with my life all by myself, thank you very much._ But Luke had seen right through it. He’d seen the way Michael’s hands had trembled, the way Michael had curled in on himself. He’d known Michael for his entire life, practically, and he’d never known Michael to be so… _defeated_.

He had told Michael to _stop lying, and tell me the fucking truth_. Luke had looked so devastated at the idea that Michael was lying to him that Michael couldn’t fight any longer. Luke was his best friend. Luke didn’t hurt him. Luke only loved him, and that was what Michael wanted so, so badly. Just to be loved. He had thought, in the beginning, that William loved him, but he didn’t.

Nobody loved somebody with their fists.

All it had taken in the end was a desperate _please, Mikey_ from Luke, and Michael spilled his entire story. Well, not all of it at once. There was a lot of stops and starts. A lot of tears. But eventually, over the course of a few hours, Luke had gotten the entire sordid tale. He had held Michael the entire time, first only his hands then Michael’s entire body curled up in Luke’s lap. At the end of it, Luke had been shaking with sorrow and anger, but he’d pushed everything aside to cling tightly to Michael and whisper _please, don’t go back to that bastard. Please. Come home with me, and let me take care of you_.

For the first time in a long, long time, Michael felt safe. Loved. Cherished. Valued.

He had gone home with Luke. He had let Luke reschedule his meeting with Niall Horan, and Niall had been really good about it, like he could read the exhaustion plain on Michael’s battered face and the fear exuding from Luke. Niall had graciously agreed to meet with Michael on a day that was better for him, and he had told Luke to _take really good care of him, mate_. Luke had promised he would then he took Michael by the hand and let him out of the studio. Michael didn’t twice.

Until he did.

“William tracked me down after a few days. He couldn’t stand the fact that I’d walked away from him, so he decided he’d teach me a lesson. Either he had me, or nobody could. It was… It was the scariest thing I’ve ever lived through—and I almost didn’t. He already knew where Luke lived, you see. He had let me visit with Luke a few times when I was still under his control, so finding me wasn’t a problem. William is the type of person who is the big kid on the playground until somebody stands up to him. Luke and I figured that I was fine. That he’d cut his losses and move on. He didn’t.”

This time, it is Michael who tightens his hold on Ashton’s hands. His knuckles are white. He feels slightly nauseous like he always does when he thinks about that awful day, about opening up the door to his nightmare and being thrown through the wall like a sack of potatoes.

“Hey, hey, you don’t have to tell me,” says Ashton. He is rubbing circles on the back of Michael’s hands. Michael likes the gesture. It makes him feel safe when this story makes him feel anything but. “I don’t have to know the whole story. You’ve already told me enough. That man is a bastard, and I hope I never, ever meet him, ‘cause I’d probably strangle him with my bare hands.”

Ashton says it in jest in an attempt to distract Michael from the demons threatening to overwhelm him. The diversion works, but the glint in Ashton’s eyes suggests he is dead serious about strangling William. Michael is overcome with a sense of calmness that he never has whenever he’s talking about William, not even when he’s talking to Luke or Calum.

Here with Ashton, who is holding his hands and looking at him like he’s something _precious_ , Michael doesn’t feel scared. It gives him the courage to finish his story. He owes Ashton the grand finale, so he takes a deep, readying breath before he continues, rushing to the end.

“He called me all types of names. Told me I was worthless. An easy fuck. A slut. He hit me. Punched me. Kicked me. I fought back. For the first time in a long time, I stood up for myself again. I wanted to make Luke proud. I’d promised Luke that I wouldn’t go back to him, so I had to fight back. I had to. But, the thing is, it only made him madder. He grabbed me by my throat. It hurt like hell. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I was terrified I’d, like, paralyze myself or something if I tried to get away. I remember thinking, ‘This is it.’ Only, it wasn’t it. He threw me through the fucking wall in the living room.”

This is the part of the story that Luke knows firsthand. That Calum knows almost as well. Michael doesn’t know how to tell this part. He’s not well-practiced. He doesn’t know how to explain how badly it hurt to burst through the drywall. Or how much debris there was in the air. Or about how quickly his body had broken.

So he lets go of Ashton’s hand. Ashton is reluctant to release his hold, but Michael coaxes him until Michael is free. He grabs the hem of his shirt. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, he pulls it up his torso and over his head, letting it dangle from his other shoulder. Ashton is confused for a second, unsure of where to look. Michael tries not to shiver underneath Ashton’s heavy gaze as he turns his body to show off the glory of the scar twisting around his ribs.

“He threw me though one of the studs. I mean, I didn’t break it, but it splintered off and left me with this. Luke nearly—he had impeccable timing. It was like the universe was telling him that  he needed to be home _right now_. He caught it all from the moment William threw me through the wall, but he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t stop the blood, either.”

Ashton reaches for the scar, eager to run his fingers along it, but he stops himself at the last second, and looks up at Michael, asking, “Can I?”

Michael closes his eyes. He nods. He doesn’t typically like it when people touch his scar, even if it’s by accident. Luke and Calum are the exceptions, because Michael knows they need the reminder that they saved him. That he’s really alive and well and William-free because of them. But anybody else, Michael goes out of his way to make sure nobody knows the scar even exists. It’s an ugly thing. It has an even uglier history, and Michael doesn’t like thinking about it, let alone talking about it. So he wears a shirt when he swims. He doesn’t ever undress when he’s with one-night stands. Most importantly, he makes sure none of his cut-off shirts hang low enough to display his scar.

Ashton’s fingers are cool against Michael’s heated skin. Michael jumps at the contact, startled by the temperature difference. He mutters an apology a second later, but Ashton shushes him softly.

Michael shivers.

Ashton’s touch is so, so gentle. His fingers dance along the jagged lines of the scar, and Michael doesn’t feel like pushing him away. He leans into them instead, forcing Ashton’s fingers deeper into his marred skin until Michael doesn’t associate the ugly scar with the monster of a man but rather with the kind, gentle curiosity of Ashton himself. Michael kind of wants him to stay there forever.

“Luke called an ambulance, and he tried to stop my bleeding, but nothing was really working. I don’t remember much beyond the pain,” says Michael, eyes still closed. “Luke was hysterical on the phone and then he wasn’t much better as he pressed towels pressed against my bleeding back.”

There are some details that Michael is leaving out. Things like Michael stuttering out apology after apology for breaking his promise to Luke. Like Michael making Luke vow not to give up on his dreams of making it big on the internet, that he was already mostly there. Like Michael swearing up and down he’d haunt Luke _and_ Calum if they fucked everything up and didn’t actually get married like Michael knew they were destined to do.

“Then Calum was there somehow—later, he told me that he’d followed Luke home, because they were going to have a late-night date but he had to be at the field early in the morning. Calum—well, he took care of William, nearly beat him to death. He probably would have actually killed him had the paramedics not showed up, and then all Calum cared about was me.”

Michael is leaving out other things from that awful day, too. He can’t help it. His mind is all over the place, and he feels like the only thing that grounding him to this moment is the weight of Ashton’s fingers pressed against his scar. He’s doing well telling Ashton the necessary facts of this awful story. He doesn’t think he can talk about the rest, not now.

Like Luke cupping Michael’s cheek with his bloodstained hand and saying, _You’re not going to fucking die on me, Mikey. You’re just not. You can’t leave me alone, so stop your blabbering_.

Like Luke jumping into the ambulance with him and holding his hand the entire time until they got to the hospital and he had to let go.

Like Calum threatening William against ever showing his face around Michael again.

Like Calum asserting himself as Michael’s protector without ever expecting anything in return.

Like Luke and Calum sitting in the world’s tiniest waiting room for thirty-six hours straight, through three surgeries and two near-death scares, until they were finally allowed to visit Michael in the ICU.

“They patched me up in the hospital,” Michael concludes. It’s the only other place he can take his story. One day, he’ll tell Ashton the unabridged version. He swears to himself he will. “It took a couple of weeks, but I was good as new, nearly. Just an ugly new scar and a cast on my arm and a whole boat-load of pain meds.”

“Michael,” breathes Ashton, reverent and so full of love that Michael finally gives into the tiny voice inside of his head that begs him to believe Luke, to believe that maybe Ashton is, in fact, _gone for him_.

Michael dares to open his eyes again, to meet Ashton’s gaze, and he swears the world stops turning for just this beautiful moment. Michael has just told him his awful, horrible story, and Ashton is still looking at him like he always has—with that hanging-of-the-moon adoration shining bright in his eyes. Michael never wants this moment to end. He never wants Ashton to stop looking at him like this.

“I’m a little broken,” says Michael, because that’s the truth. He can’t sleep through the night, typically, without seeing the monster in his dreams—in his nightmares. “I thought you should know. You deserve to know.”

“You’re perfect,” says Ashton. He says it like he believes it, and he makes Michael want to believe it, too. “You didn’t have to tell me, but I’m glad you did, because I promise you that you will never again feel like William made you feel. You’re not worthless. You’re not somebody’s punching bag. You deserve so much better for yourself than what that bastard did, and I’d prove it to you, if you’d let me.”

“Move in here,” says Michael.

Maybe it’s not the best setting to ask. Maybe the universe is screaming at him that the timing is all wrong. Maybe he could have used a different lead-in, but Ashton had to meet the demons that haunt Michael even today. Michael has to ask him to stay, and he has to do it now, fuck the universe.

“Please. I’ve already talked to Luke, and we agreed. We’d like you to stay. Forever.”

Ashton looks away, cheeks flushing in humiliation at the reminder that he doesn’t have a home. That he lives on the street. That he’d asked Michael— _begged_ Michael—for the potato salad that had been spilled out on the sidewalk, because he had been so, so hungry. It’s a total one-eighty from the man who had proclaimed, not even half of a minute ago, that he’d prove Michael wasn’t worthless if only Michael let him.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” says Michael, adamant, because Ashton _has to say yes_. Luke said Ashton would tell him yes if only he asked. This is him asking. “Please, stay. You can look for a job, and you can make some money and get back on your feet.”

“It’s not so easy,” snaps Ashton, glancing wildly up at Michael. He sounds angry, annoyed, but Michael sees the glint of hope clawing desperately in his eyes. “I’m nowhere near stable. I can’t—fuck. I can’t help you with the bills.”

“We’ll cover them for you until you can pitch in. I mean, it’s not like we’re lacking funds.”

“You’ve already given me so much. I can’t expect you to just—what the hell do you want from me? What’s the catch?”

It’s a trick. An effort to make Michael mad so that Michael will be the one to withdraw the invitation, and Ashton will have an easy way out. So that Ashton doesn’t have to outright say no, because it’s obvious he wants nothing more in the entire world than to say yes.

“There is no catch,” says Michael, calmly. “It’s your choice, but I think Calum would quite like to have his best friend again, and Luke thinks you’re pretty cool.”

Ashton is quiet for a moment, letting defeat wash over him and looking for all of the world like he’s glad he isn’t celebrating a victory. He finally looks back up at Michael. His eyes are so, so wide. They’re filled with hope and a little fear and something else that Michael thinks might still be love, even after everything Michael has told him.

“And you? What do you think of the man who was pitiful enough to starve on the streets?”

“I think,” says Michael, carefully and making sure to hold Ashton’s gaze the entire time, “you’re the world, Ashton. I think you’re the fucking world, and I don’t want you to leave. Ever.”

Ashton draws in a shaky breath. He says, “It’s not going to be easy.”

“No, it’s not,” agrees Michael.

“I’m already falling in love with you,” says Ashton, and Michael’s breath catches in his throat. Ashton smiles, a little self-depreciatively at him. “Want to change your mind now? I mean, I’m sure there’s nothing more unappealing than a fucking homeless man falling in love.”

Michael dares to reach forward, to cup Ashton’s cheek with his hand. Ashton leans into it automatically. Michael really, really wants to kiss him. He doesn’t. Not now. Not when it’s much more important to set things right between them.

“I let a man into my heart once, and he nearly killed me. I’d rather have the love of a homeless man than whatever the hell I had from that monster,” says Michael. For once, the universe is completely silent. Maybe it’s in awe of Michael’s willingness to open himself up after eleven-plus months of closing himself off. Michael doesn’t care for any more signs from the universe. He knows what he wants, and that is Ashton. “But, you know, I think I’ve been falling in love with you since the moment we met, so if you want me, you’re not getting rid of me.”

Ashton chokes out a sob. He isn’t crying, because there are no tears, but Michael imagines that this is everything beyond Ashton’s wildest dreams. It’s sort of beyond Michael’s, too. The moment is precious between them. Tender.

“I—I want you,” says Ashton, and Michael feels like everything is right in the world. “And I want to stay here, if you’d let me.”

“I already said you’re not getting rid of me, and you can be sure as hell that neither Calum nor Luke will let you go, either. You’re sort of stuck with us, if you want us.”

Ashton nods, too overcome with the devastating feeling of getting everything he could possibly ever want at once—well, almost everything.

“I want to kiss you,” he says.

Things aren’t perfect between them, but they’re better than they were when they first met. Michael and Luke have opened their home up to Ashton, and Ashton has found his best friend Calum, and Michael has finally said _fuck it_ to his fear of falling in love again. It’s a start, at the very least. It’s a foundation they can build a future upon.

“You shouldn’t,” says Michael, because a tiny part of him might still be just a little bit afraid. He needs to make sure Ashton isn’t just being nice. He needs to make sure Ashton understands what he’s getting into. Mostly, he needs to make sure he isn’t alone. They’ve got a long, difficult future before them, but it’s going to be beautiful. “Not after what I told you. You shouldn’t want me. I can’t offer you the world. I’m a little broken.”

“We’re all a little broken, but you? Michael, you’re the fucking world. I was starving and a stranger and you wouldn’t let me eat the damn potato salad. You saved my fucking life,” says Ashton, matter-of-factly, reaching forward and grabbing Michael by his hip and drawing him closer. “You’ve already offered me the world. Everything else? All of that hard stuff? We’ll take it one step at a time. But, all of that is future-Michael-and-Ashton’s problems. Right now, I’m going to kiss you.”

So he does.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://tigerlily-sunshine.tumblr.com/)
> 
> The specific tag for this fic is found [here](http://tigerlily-sunshine.tumblr.com/tagged/Potato-Salad) on my tumblr.


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